Within a year Mrs. Garrick followed to the grave the husband whom she
never ceased to mourn, and David had nothing more to face than the
prejudice of his brother, Peter, and of his sisters, if he should
resolve ultimately to adopt the profession on which his heart was
fixed.

It was not, however, till nearly three years after, in 1741, that
Garrick, determined to take the decisive step, first feeling his way
by playing Chamont in _The Orphan_, and Sir Harry Wildair, at Ipswich,
where he appeared under the name of Mr. Lydall; and under this same
name, in the same year, he made his first appearance at Goodman's
Fields Theatre, in the part of Richard III. His success was
marvellous. Considering the small experience he had had, no actor ever
made such a successful _début_. No doubt by waiting and exercising his
powers of observation, and by studying many parts in private, he had
to a certain extent, matured his powers. But making allowance for
all his great natural gifts, there is no denying that Garrick, in one
leap, gained a position which, in the case of most other actors, has
only been reached through years of toil. He seems to have charmed all
classes: the learned and the ignorant, the cultured and the vulgar;
great statesmen, poets, and even the fribbles of fashion were all
nearly unanimous in his praise. The dissentient voices were so few
that they were drowned in the clamor of applause. Quinn might snarl
and growl; and Horace Walpole, who seems to have grown alarmed at
so much of the incense of praise finding its way to the nostrils of
another, might give vent to a few feeble sneers; such as when he said,
"I do not mention the things written in his praise because he writes
most of them himself." But the battle was won. Nature in the place
of Artificiality, Originality in the place of Conventionality, had